For a long time Red Hat was a company that I loved to mock, primarily because I was annoyed at how much power they have over Linux. But I recently realized that they are the ones that are sheparding the growth of the Linux industry while the rest of these chumps plunder along and take the weak way out.

Going back to an earlier thought. For all you companies that want to work with Microsoft, I would suggest you get them to acquire you. Anything else is a dead end.

I agree wholeheartedly, Dave. This isn't a "told you so," either, since you've had good reasons for holding out on supporting Red Hat.

The fact remains that there's exactly one major open source company that is willing to stand up to Microsoft (two, if you count IBM), and that's Red Hat. We should be supporting Red Hat, because the open source industry's success depends on Red Hat's success.

About the author

Matt Asay is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. Matt brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.
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